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July 31, 2025 13 mins

We chatted to the Prince of the Provinces, Matua Shane, on the eve of the Trump tariff announcement and on the menu was the risk of stagflation, the OCR, John Key's rock star economy, sleeping through the tsunami alerts, Jacinda and Kamala's books, and our joint Te Puke Rugby Club fundraiser. 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Change Oones kicking off the country today four o'clock this afternoon,
we get Trump's tariff announcement, So we're maybe heading towards
fifteen percent. Who knows. I don't even know if Trump
knows half the time. But Shane Jones, as long as
we're at the base level, whatever that is, we're doing okay,
are we? Or is that being a bit negative? No?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
We have to deal with the cards that we're playing with.
The reality is we're five point two million people, We've
got two hundred and sixty seventy maybe eighty billion US
GDP and what are they at? Twenty twenty trillion? So
it's very tempting to break wind and be staunch and rude,

(00:44):
but there are other ways to deal with these issues,
and I back my leader. It's often important to allow
silence to do that. You're speaking for you.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, that can't be said about you, Well, that criticism
can't be leveled at you too often being too silent.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, I did say that's the leader's strategy, not the Matua.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Well, you've been busy this week getting rid of Jacinda's
coal and gas spain.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Our worst decision ever of an economic character since the
Treaty of White Honey. Look, it's driven by this puritanical
religious view about climate change. It's this dystopian view that
the world is going to fry and we've got no hope.
And when you've got that type of mentality, it really
requires a strong robust response to myself. We're in New Zealand. First,

(01:30):
we are not going to cow. We're not going to
be guilt trip over climate change. If we need to
do Albert, that's not closing down the economy or taxing
belching cows to change the weather and cape down.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, but you're rewriting history here. You were standing but
you and Winston were standing behind you, Sinder in twenty
eighteen when she did it, nodding.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Away passively, sadly. This is an act of penance on
my part. But you say it just shows I'm an
ordinary ke. We both, like many of the husbands, fathers
and sons that are listening to this show, capable of redemption.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Let's move on from your coal and gas band. So,
Matthew Horton, I'm quoting the Herald yet again an interesting
column today saying, basically Crystopher Luxen's on borrowed time, I
want to go to coalition, cannibalization and just a tick.
But he says we're headed for stagflation. Okay, so that's
stagnant economic growth, high unemployment and rising inflation. It's probably

(02:27):
the worst economic disease or earlier you can get.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Well. Stagflation is something that brought the United States down
about thirty or forty years ago. Look, Winston has encouraged
me to go around and hold these public meetings. I'm
holding one on Nelson, I've had one in New Plymouth,
and I'm dealing with the issues that are afflicting the
daily lives of people on behalf of New Zealand. First,

(02:53):
so I tend to not pass views about the quality
of the National Party's stewardships of their own brand, but
notrvous from me. Every role I've been given I've delivered.
I extended all the marine farming permits till twenty fifty.
I've got rid of the oil and gas band. I've
spent sixty million dollars trying to turbocharge gu thermal energy.

(03:14):
I'm spending money in small communities, including the Chathams and
this Stuart Island, so that they can reduce the costs
of their energy. I've got a mandate to do that,
and I only hope and pray that more of my
colleagues are willing to emulate the more pragmatic approach. There
is no electability involved in being puritanical or being so

(03:35):
calvinistic that voters believe that we don't care. We do care.
So we just need a mix of policies that people
can see that their lives are changing on the ground,
and that's what I've been doing.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Are you doing a better job of spending the money
this time around, because the Provincial Growth Fund under just
Sender was a bit of a lolly scramble.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
No, those are just some heretics writing in the media.
You always get a few sort of aberrations, and that
happened because of Obviously this time round money isn't a
shorter supply. But throughout the South Island, mate a whole
host of the projects that I funded. Every time I
go there, I've got free beer for life.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well that doesn't necessarily make them go to economic policies.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Well, it makes me popular in the South Island.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
There's an election coming up. What about coalition cannibalization Like
Winston and Seymour, you can say what you want about
demand yourself for that matter, but your messaging is pretty clear.
Once again that has been a real criticism of the
National Party within the coalition.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, once again, you know you've got to you've got
to hang that on. You've got to hang that on
the fact that Winston and I were elected on the
basis of a manifesto and on the basis of a
coalition agreement. We've got a rear ends booted right out
of public life in twenty twenty into the desert for

(04:55):
three years. So we've let a bitter and hard lesson
stay on message, trying to avoid too many distractions, and the
message is this, we're not going to tolerate mission creep
either on climate change, the unnecessary treaty itis that is
quite frankly undermining economic activity and its distorting where Marydam

(05:15):
should be going. And the other thing is that we
cannot afford a lot of these indulgence luxury woksh beliefs.
Look at our economy, Look at the fact that our
export percentages of our GDP are going down, energy prices
are skyrocketing. Those are the issues that I focus on,
and I believe Winston and I have been delivering on

(05:36):
and if people love it, then vote for it.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Shane Jones worth us on the country. You're just going
to take a quick break back on the other side
of it. I want o'honan on the economy. Shane Jones
joining us, Part two of a two part interview. Believe
it or not, let's talk about the economy. We touched
on stagflation, which is stagnant economic growth, high unemployment, rising inflation.
We've got all of those. The jury's out on the

(06:01):
inflation perhaps here in New Zealand. But Shane Jones, the
Reserve Bank GDP forecast is picking zero point three percent
decline for the June quarter. We don't know those numbers yet,
but that forecast won't be a mile off. We've basically
spent the last two or three years in recession.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well, obviously we came out of COVID with a big
fiscal overhand. We've tried to correct the fiscals. The monetary
policy driven by the Reserve Bank stayed. They got that wrong.
That's obviously there's up too much equidity out of the economy.
We don't control the Reserve Bank, sadly, but you know,
on the export side, we are doing well, a lot
of your exporters in the South Island have said that

(06:42):
they're pretty happy, but they've acknowledged that their strength is
not such that they can lift the whole economy out
of the funk. Yeah. I agree that Auckland isn't a funk,
possibly related to the poor treatment of property values. But
I say this to you, we are trust up in

(07:05):
so many rules and regulations that will become if not complacent.
Too many people have gone into survival mode without hope,
and that's the trick of a politician. By all means,
keep a clear view about what we can afford, but
don't withdraw the crown from the economy where an injection

(07:25):
is needed to spurt activity. That's why I came into politics.
You don't get everything right, but if you sit in
a calvinistic way on the sideline barracking delivering homilies without
spending money from time to time, don't be surprised if
the economy doesn't follow.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Okay. I think the quickest fix is for the Reserve
Bank to get off the fence and start making some
serious cuts to the official cash.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
John Key, who I think was a pretty smart politician
and economic commentator, is saying that we should be cutting
a one hundred basis points.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, well, John's in a position to do that. But
I don't want to remind John that he had a
golden opportunity to change the trajectory and improve our economy
and he did it largely through immigration. New Zealand first
is not a huge believer in infusing the country with
a whole lot more immigrants when the nets are on
the couch.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Is that because you're racist.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
No, it's because we're nationalists and we're not going to
have continuing flows of people coming from the Third World
into New Zealand whilst we are struggling to cope with
our infrastructure. And number two, we need people in New
Zealand that we need, not those who need us. And
the days of everyone floating here as an uber driver

(08:44):
trying to get citizenship and running away to Australia after
the next election. I hope to bring that all that
to an end.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
John Key presided over the Rockstar economy. Once again, you're
rewriting history.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
No, John had several great dramas to deal with, was
not the least which was the christ earthquake. But sadly,
our per capita GDP income. Our productivity went down in
John's time, but hey, we're responsible for what we've inherited.
In my view, we need to focus more on a
mixed economy where the Crown can actually accelerate activities. See.

(09:19):
I don't believe we should impose any more burdens to
do with climate change on industry unless we're going to
help them make the transition. In fact, what I hear
from the sort of old maidish contributions from the Labor
Party the other night, from Megan Woods and others, it
was like pipe cleaner somehow by canceling the oil and
gas industry, destroying the coal industry, we're going to keep

(09:40):
the lights on. I mean, that level of naivety, biggest belief,
and that's why they'll never ever, for as long as
I'm around, form another government.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Were you over sharing when you said you slipped through
the tsunami alerts after a glass or three.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Of red wine lot made ours in Lake topor so
For a tsunami is about to strike the West coast,
it has come up though I can jump over the
hook of falls then somehow make its way into Laketpoor
and wash up in the hotel room where I was
as a part of the geothermal energy and I look
a lot of this because tashtafization of these alarms, et cetera.

(10:12):
Kiwis are blessed with inordinate amounts of common sense and
a lot of this sort of wokish exaggeration not only
blights the media, but it sort of devalues the common
sense capacity of Kewis.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Okay, we'll talk about wokersm I know you haven't read
Jacinda's new book. Did you realize? Kamala Harris is coming
out with a book and it's called one hundred and
seven Days and that's how long she had to campaign
against the Trumpster.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Well, I think the book should outline in one hundred
and seven days she saved her country from absolute disaster
by losing the race. That's perfect second thing, Jacinda and
Kamala are bookends of a woksh social engineering experiment. It's

(11:01):
ruined the UK. It has brought New Zealand in many
respects down many pegs, which is why I'm fighting against
this mythology that you can't grow the country without destroying
the planet. That we don't want to get ahead, we
don't want to take risks, We don't want to have
trade offs. I mean, I promise you this, mate, when

(11:23):
someone stands in the future and through the long lens
of history looks at our country, they'll be amazed as
to how many of us lost leave of our senses,
brought into this religiosity and this cultism. And the fact
that the Green Party said yesterday in Parliament, the moment
they get back into power, they're going to cancel the
oil and gas industry, which I'm trying to revive. They're

(11:44):
talking about canceling investment. They're talking about canceling the desirability
of New Zealand to be a responsible economic destination. And
I'll tell you a little secret. They never talk about
the Indonesian coal that comes month after month keep the
lights on. That's the hypocrisy of these cultists on the
other side of politics. I've got no time with their dystopian,

(12:06):
predictable troops.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Well that's a wonderful, wonderful piece of rhetoric there. I
hope we can enjoy similar rhetoric in three weeks time. Friday,
three weeks time, you and I are kind of well,
you're you're doing most of the heavy lifting on this.
There to help a wee bit and try and get
you off the chain. Unleash you. Shane Jones unplugged for
the Tapuke Rugby Club fundraiser. They sold out in a

(12:29):
matter of ours, Shane. They're expecting big things from you.
I hope you don't disappoint and go quiet on them.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
No doubt you'll be there to spark my spark, my
interest and I'll be like a spark plug. Look. I
come from Anui, our rugby hero with big Peter Jones,
fantastic hero of the fifties and sixties. Sadly my rugby
playing ability doesn't match my rhetoric. But let that small
fact slip away.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
You're not there to play rugby, You're there to raise
money and Peter Jones is an amazing nineteen fifty six
scoring that winning try against the spring Boxing Rica South
Africa at Eden Park. Got on radio with Winston McCarthy said,
I'm absolutely buggered and the nation was shocked. Gee, I
don't think you would have gone very well in nineteen

(13:16):
fifty six.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Well, I tell you what made I wouldn't have stood
up in Parliament and used the sea word.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Good on you, Shane Jones, looking forward to your company
in Tapok three weeks time

Speaker 2 (13:26):
I gay buddy, see it bye,
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